Cazzie Russell

For those people into all things Michigan, I thought I'd pass this along. At the 12 minute mark of David Axelrod's most recent podcast, Bill Bradley talks about how Cazzie Russell and him asked each other for forgiveness at the 40th Anniversary of their championship.

Some google research also showed that Cazzie, now an assistant coach at Armstrong State, will be coming back "to the University of Michigan and Crisler Arena - dubbed the 'House That Cazzie Built' - when Armstrong State faces UM in an exhibition contest on November 4, 2017. It will be the first time that Russell will be on the court for a UM contest since 1966."

Brief Edit: So, the webpage from Armstrong State, which I quote and link to says 2017. But, yes, this happened in 2016. Didn't know about the tension between Russell and Bradley prior to the podcast. Again, for those people into all things Michigan.

Cazzie Russell is an assistant coach for Armstrong State - the team that Michigan plays tonight in an exhibition game in "The House that Cazzie Built". Great story in MLive about Cazzie's road back to Crisler and the reaction of his players when they learn who their coach really is.

U of M basketball great, Cazzie Russell, will be honored at the 20th Annual Legends of the Hardwood Breakfast.

It is being held in conjunction with the Final Four and the National Association of Basketball Coaches Convention in Houston on the weekend of April 2 - 4.

2016 Coach Wooden “Keys to Life” Award Winner Cazzie Russell

Russell grew up in Chicago and was the Chicago Sun-Times Boy’s High School Player of the Year in 1962. He went on to earn All-America honors at the University of Michigan while leading them to three consecutive Big Ten championships and two Final Four appearances, losing to defending National Champion UCLA under John Wooden. In 1966 he was named College Basketball Player of the Year, averaging 30 points a game. Russell was the first player taken in the 1966 draft by the New York Knicks and had a 12-year career in the NBA where he won the NBA championship in 1970 with the Knicks and was named an all-star in 1972 with the Golden State Warriors. He went on to coach in the CBA and most recently at the Savannah College of Art and Design for 13 seasons. He is currently an associate pastor at Immanuel Baptist Church in Savannah, Georgia.

My wife and I are heading south at the end of the month and are staying in Savannah, GA for a day and a half. I was hoping to meet Cazzie Russell there and have been trying to set this up but the church he was last at (Live Oak in Savannah) appears to have closed. Cazzie is my first sports hero and has remained highly respected. This is a "bucket list" sort of goal on my part and would appreciate any information the board can give me. Is he still living in Savannah?

As the Michigan basketball team returns to its traditional place among the nation's elite programs, Alan Glenn, in a Michigan Today piece, looks back a half-century at another time when the program resurrected itself, led by Cazzie Russell, Cager for the Ages

Bob Cantrell played in the Wolverine backcourt before and after Russell's arrival. "The first two years were really torture," he told an interviewer in the '70s. "The roof [at Yost Field House] leaked, there were no fans, we lost all the time. It was just unbelievable. We only had about 200 people at one game, I remember. Everything was football. Basketball was the big joke. If you were a basketball player, everybody looked at you like you were a freak. Then, overnight, they knew who you were. All of a sudden, we were the number one team in the country."

Of course Michigan's reversal of fortune wasn't quite that abrupt, and it wasn't all due to Russell. Coach Dave Strack had been building up the team since 1960, and by 1963 the Wolverine lineup overflowed with talent: Cantrell, Bill Buntin, Larry Tregoning, George Pomey, Oliver Darden. But it was Cazzie Russell who emerged as the star. Almost as soon as the lanky, six-foot-five-and-a-half, 210-pound guard stepped out onto the court, records began to fall. In his first game, a 90-76 victory over Ball State at the end of November, Russell led the team with 30 points. By the following March he had acquired 640 more, earning him the school's season scoring record.